Coachella 2017: On Music’s Most Controversial Poster Hierarchy

The lineup for Coachella 2017 arrived today, and at first blush the biggest surprise may have been just how unsurprising it was. In late November, speculation started circulating that this year’s headliners would be Radiohead, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar. Now we know this year’s headliners, and they’re… Radiohead, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar. Big names, all, and any festival would count itself lucky to have them (and probably will, knowing how similar festival lineups have come to be). But in an age of sneak-attack album releases, the fact that the rumors were actually true comes almost as something of an anticlimax.

What is noteworthy is that the reunion acts so prevalent at recent Coachellas are absent here. No, the Smiths still aren’t getting back together, but neither are Oasis, and even the long-dormant Avalanches, making their first U.S. appearance in about 15 years, are billed below not just commercial blockbusters (Future, DJ Snake) but also subtle electronic music (Nicolas Jaar, Four Tet, Róisín Murphy). Speaking of which: The EDM bubble may have burst, but not-so-subtle electronic music, increasingly prevalent at Coachella over the past several years, remains strikingly prominent here. Hey, at least they’ve moved on from holograms!

The rest of the poster, though, is generally where the action is. As Tom Breihan wrote last year in Stereogum, the billing here is the music world’s annual chance to see something approximating a pecking order, in stark black and white (er, black and sunset-colored). But Coachella has its own kind of logic when it comes to the hierarchy of musical relevancy, and it’s not always clear-cut in favor of mainstream popularity or critical appreciation. Promoter Goldenvoice seems to look favorably upon repeat performers when it comes to bumping up the font size from year to year, though much of the billing order doesn’t even come near that amount of sense. On first glance, here’s what surprised us—about the poster rather than the unsurprising lineup itself, really.

Remember Them? Two Door Cinema Club, the Head and the Heart, Empire of the Sun, Grouplove

You know how Kings of Leon have been at the festival headliner level for what feels like forever, despite not having released anything good or even relevant in, well, what feels like forever? Every lineup with this kind of billing hierarchy has a few moments like that, where you may find yourself realizing that a band you’d stopped paying attention to a while ago seems as big, if not bigger, as they’ve ever been. (Though being a repeat Coachella performer already seems to help.) Two Door Cinema Club, the Head and the Heart, and Grouplove have all been away from Coachella for at least a few years, and they all recently released their first albums in about as long—and they’ve all managed to keep climbing up the lineup poster, despite albums that flew under the radar critically. When you check their chart performance and bigger label affiliations, it starts to make (business) sense why they’re all billed in the third row. The most curious case, though, is second-row’ers Empire of the Sun, whose 2008 song—yes, 2008—“Walking on a Dream” finally became a U.S. hit last year, thanks to a car commercial. Look for Foster the People’s Coachella comeback in two years—as a headliner, of course!

Why You Have to Be So Rude: The Avalanches, Guided By Voices, Swet Shop Boys, Mitski, Car Seat Headrest, S U R V I V E,Tove Lo,Francis & the Lights

If some acts are billed higher than you might expect, then it follows that others are billed lower. All of these folks are listed on the fourth row or lower. It’s easy for those who were listening to Mitski’s “Your Best American Girl” throughout 2016 to forget she’s still relatively smaller-scale commercially. And it’s understandable that some critics’ darlings, particularly guitar-driven ones like indie stalwarts Guided By Voices or their followers in Car Seat Headrest, might not appear in a font size to match their stature among record nerds (like the people who work on this website). That’s Coachella. But what’s really surprising is that mainstream, seemingly Coachella-y artists like Tove Lo, Francis & the Lights, and “Stranger Things” dudes S U R V I V E—all people who had big 2016s—were left languishing in quite small fronts. And here’s hoping Swet Shop Boys’ sharply barbed political humor doesn’t get lost in front of a sparse early-day crowd—because their name sure gets lost on the dead-last line of day two.

For the Kids With Drugs: DJ Snake, Martin Garrix, Dillon Francis

Coachella’s Indio location originally played host to bands like Pearl Jam in the early 1990s, but the festival itself has a strong lineage of dance music. The Chemical Brothers were on the inaugural 1999 bill, Daft Punk’s 2006 Coachella performance with their pyramid is legendary, and the big beats have continued to spread beyond the dance-heavy Sahara Tent, with Calvin Harris as a headliner in 2016. Huge EDM festival promoter SFX filed for bankruptcy last year, but Coachella continues to try to fill the gap for those still waiting for the drop. Here, too, there’s a sense of dues-paying: DJ Snake, Martin Garrix, Dillon Francis, and others have all played the festival before, but this year they’re all second-liners. And at a festival where the crowd skews young and it’s notoriously expensive to get drunk, they’re certainly not alone: If you don’t recognize a name on the lineup, assume it’s probably a DJ.

Wait, Is Hans Zimmer Underrated or Overrated?

The prolific, Oscar-winning film composer is listed at the beginning of the third row on day three, right ahead of Khaled. Decent billing, but dude composed the Lion King score, so maybe it’s crazy to list him next to the likes of Marshmello and Lil Uzi Vert? Or maybe not? Not sure how many drugs you have to take to ~lose yourself~ to the Dark Knight score in the desert night, but here’s to finding out!